“Oh! I don’t pretend to distinguish between your blacks and whity-browns any more than I do between your cartouches,” returned Jameson.
“He was no black,” said the American lady, standing up. “But I do mean to say that I consider you an utterly unredeemed black——”
“My dear, don’t,” said the Englishwoman, drawing the other down. “It’s no good. The thing is done. He meant no harm.”
4
I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be consigned.
I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving. There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson’s room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket, put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep. If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then—if I sat up I could do nothing. I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came in. He was in his night-shirt, and looking agitated and frightened.
“Look here, old fellow,” said he in a shaking voice, “there is Musty in my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran that knife of yours into my throat.”
“My knife?”
“Yes—that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here—I must have the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there’s a good chap.”
“Where is the place?”
“Here on my right gill.”
Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp.
There was no wound of any sort there.
I told him so.
“Oh, yes! That’s fine—I tell you I felt his knife go in.”
“Nonsense, you were dreaming.”
“Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you.”
“This is a delusion, Jameson,” I replied. “The poor fellow is dead.”
“Oh, that’s very fine,” said Jameson. “It is not the first of April, and I don’t believe the yarns that you’ve been spinning. You tried to make believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife.”
“I’ll go into your room with you.”
“Do so. But he’s gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run.”
I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty. After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again, and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.
As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.
“That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still,” said he. “He has been at my throat again.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You are labouring under hallucinations.
You locked your door.”
“Oh, by Jove, yes—of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere. He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt the knife, he’d have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a revolver.”
I went into Jameson’s room. Again he insisted on my looking at his throat.
“It’s very good of you to say there is no wound,” said he. “But you won’t gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had not jumped out of bed——”
“You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is not even a scratch. This is pure imagination.”
“I’ll tell you what, old fellow, I won’t sleep in that room again. Change with me, there’s a charitable buffer. If you don’t believe in Musty, Musty won’t hurt you, maybe—anyhow you can try if he’s solid or a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom.”
“I do not quite see my way to changing rooms,” I replied; “but this I will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I will sit up with you till morning.”
“All right,” answered Jameson. “And if Musty comes in again, let out at him and do not spare him. Swear that.”
I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom, Little as I liked the man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow’s death preyed on his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.
I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker’s Upper Egypt into Jameson’s room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.
“I say,” said Jameson, raising his head, “is it too late for a brandy-and-soda?”
“Everyone is in bed.”
“What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here.”
“Well, try to go to sleep.”
He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was slipping out with his feet onto the floor.
“Confound you!” said he angrily, “you are a fine watch, you are, to let Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he’d have cut my throat. I won’t go to bed anymore!”
“Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here.”
“That’s fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can’t hear them till they are at you.”
It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.
“I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife in,” said he. “And—don’t you notice?—I speak with difficulty.”
So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to fancies.
The day passed very much as did others—Jameson was dull and sulky. After déjeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired, and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was to be done in the afternoon.
Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath and threw down his chair.
“You fellows!” he said, “you are all in league against me. You let that Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me.”
“You let that Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me.”
“He has not been here.”
“It’s a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don’t like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time he has tried to cut my throat, and in the salle à manger, too, with you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves Englishmen. I’ll go to Cairo. I’ll complain.”
It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The Oxford don undertook to sit up in the ro
om the following night.
The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded by a start and a panic.
The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left alone. The third night the attaché sat up to watch him.
Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to himself, and then only to grumble.
During the night, without being aware of it, the young attaché, who had taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror and self-reproach saw that Jameson’s chair was empty.
Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.
At dawn he was found—dead, at the door of the mosque, with his throat cut.
A Dead Finger
(A tale from A Book of Ghosts)
1
Why the National Gallery should not attract so many visitors as, say, the British Museum, I cannot explain. The latter does not contain much that, one would suppose, appeals to the interest of the ordinary sightseer. What knows such of prehistoric flints and scratched bones? Of Assyrian sculpture? Of Egyptian hieroglyphics? The Greek and Roman statuary is cold and dead. The paintings in the National Gallery glow with colour, and are instinct with life. Yet, somehow, a few listless wanderers saunter yawning through the National Gallery, whereas swarms pour through the halls of the British Museum, and talk and pass remarks about the objects there exposed, of the date and meaning of which they have not the faintest conception.
I was thinking of this problem, and endeavouring to unravel it, one morning whilst sitting in the room for English masters at the great collection in Trafalgar Square. At the same time another thought forced itself upon me. I had been through the rooms devoted to foreign schools, and had then come into that given over to Reynolds, Morland, Gainsborough, Constable, and Hogarth. The morning had been for a while propitious, but towards noon a dense umber-tinted fog had come on, making it all but impossible to see the pictures, and quite impossible to do them justice. I was tired, and so seated myself on one of the chairs, and fell into the consideration first of all of—why the National Gallery is not as popular as it should be; and secondly, how it was that the British School had no beginnings, like those of Italy and the Netherlands.
We can see the art of the painter from its first initiation in the Italian peninsula, and among the Flemings. It starts on its progress like a child, and we can trace every stage of its growth. Not so with English art. It springs to life in full and splendid maturity. Who were there before Reynolds and Gainsborough and Hogarth? The great names of those portrait and subject painters who have left their canvases upon the walls of our country houses were those of foreigners—Holbein, Kneller, Van Dyck, and Lely for portraits, and Monnoyer for flower and fruit pieces. Landscapes, figure subjects were all importations, none home-grown. How came that about? Was there no limner that was native? Was it that fashion trampled on home-grown pictorial beginnings as it flouted and spurned native music?
Here was food for contemplation. Dreaming in the brown fog, looking through it without seeing its beauties, at Hogarth’s painting of Lavinia Fenton as Polly Peachum, without wondering how so indifferent a beauty could have captivated the Duke of Bolton and held him for thirty years, I was recalled to myself and my surroundings by the strange conduct of a lady who had seated herself on a chair near me, also discouraged by the fog, and awaiting its dispersion.
I had not noticed her particularly. At the present moment I do not remember particularly what she was like. So far as I can recollect she was middle-aged, and was quietly yet well dressed. It was not her face nor her dress that attracted my attention and disturbed the current of my thoughts; the effect I speak of was produced by her strange movements and behaviour.
She had been sitting listless, probably thinking of nothing at all, or nothing in particular, when, in turning her eyes round, and finding that she could see nothing of the paintings, she began to study me. This did concern me greatly. A cat may look at the king; but to be contemplated by a lady is a compliment sufficient to please any gentleman. It was not gratified vanity that troubled my thoughts, but the consciousness that my appearance produced—first of all a startled surprise, then undisguised alarm, and, finally, indescribable horror.
Now a man can sit quietly leaning on the head of his umbrella, and glow internally, warmed and illumined by the consciousness that he is being surveyed with admiration by a lovely woman, even when he is middle-aged and not fashionably dressed; but no man can maintain his composure when he discovers himself to be an object of aversion and terror.
What was it? I passed my hand over my chin and upper lip, thinking it not impossible that I might have forgotten to shave that morning, and in my confusion not considering that the fog would prevent the lady from discovering neglect in this particular, had it occurred, which it had not. I am a little careless, perhaps, about shaving when in the country; but when in town, never.
The next idea that occurred to me was—a smut. Had a London black, curdled in that dense pea-soup atmosphere, descended on my nose and blackened it? I hastily drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket, moistened it, and passed it over my nose, and then each cheek. I then turned my eyes into the corners and looked at the lady, to see whether by this means I had got rid of what was objectionable in my personal appearance.
Then I saw that her eyes, dilated with horror, were riveted, not on my face, but on my leg.
My leg! What on earth could that harmless member have in it so terrifying? The morning had been dull; there had been rain in the night, and I admit that on leaving my hotel I had turned up the bottoms of my trousers. That is a proceeding not so uncommon, not so outrageous as to account for the stony stare of this woman’s eyes.
If that were all I would turn my trousers down.
Then I saw her shrink from the chair on which she sat to one further removed from me, but still with her eyes fixed on my leg—about the level of my knee. She had let fall her umbrella, and was grasping the seat of her chair with both hands, as she backed from me. I need hardly say that I was greatly disturbed in mind and feelings, and forgot all about the origin of the English schools of painters, and the question why the British Museum is more popular than the National Gallery.
Thinking that I might have been spattered by a hansom whilst crossing Oxford Street, I passed my hand down my side hastily, with a sense of annoyance, and all at once touched something cold, clammy, that sent a thrill to my heart, and made me start and take a step forward. At the same moment, the lady, with a cry of horror, sprang to her feet, and with raised hands fled from the room, leaving her umbrella where it had fallen.
There were other visitors to the Picture Gallery besides ourselves, who had been passing through the saloon, and they turned at her cry, and looked in surprise after her.
The policeman stationed in the room came to me and asked what had happened. I was in such agitation that I hardly knew what to answer. I told him that I could explain what had occurred little better than himself. I had noticed that the lady had worn an odd expression, and had behaved in most extraordinary fashion, and that he had best take charge of her umbrella, and wait for her return to claim it.
This questioning by the official was vexing, as it prevented me from at once and on the spot investigating the cause of her alarm and mine—hers at something she must have seen on my leg, and mine at something I had distinctly felt creeping up my leg.
The numbing and sickening effect on me of the touch of the object I had not seen was not to be shaken off at once. Indeed, I felt as though my hand were contaminated, and that I could have no rest till I had thoroughly washed the hand, and, if possible, washed away the
feeling that had been produced.
I looked on the floor, I examined my leg, but saw nothing. As I wore my overcoat, it was probable that in rising from my seat the skirt had fallen over my trousers and hidden the thing, whatever it was. I therefore hastily removed my overcoat and shook it, then I looked at my trousers. There was nothing whatever on my leg, and nothing fell from my overcoat when shaken.
Accordingly I reinvested myself, and hastily left the gallery; then took my way as speedily as I could, without actually running, to Charing Cross Station and down the narrow way leading to the Metropolitan, where I went into Faulkner’s bath and hairdressing establishment, and asked for hot water to thoroughly wash my hand and well soap it. I bathed my hand in water as hot as I could endure it, employed carbolic soap, and then, after having a good brush down, especially on my left side where my hand had encountered the object that had so affected me, I left. I had entertained the intention of going to the Princess’s Theatre that evening, and of securing a ticket in the morning; but all thought of theatre-going was gone from me. I could not free my heart from the sense of nausea and cold that had been produced by the touch. I went into Gatti’s to have lunch, and ordered something, I forget what, but, when served, I found that my appetite was gone. I could eat nothing; the food inspired me with disgust. I thrust it from me untasted, and, after drinking a couple of glasses of claret, left the restaurant, and returned to my hotel.
Feeling sick and faint, I threw my overcoat over the sofa-back, and cast myself on my bed.
I do not know that there was any particular reason for my doing so, but as I lay my eyes were on my great-coat.
The density of the fog had passed away, and there was light again, not of first quality, but sufficient for a Londoner to swear by, so that I could see everything in my room, though through a veil, darkly.
I do not think my mind was occupied in any way. About the only occasions on which, to my knowledge, my mind is actually passive or inert is when crossing the Channel in The Foam from Dover to Calais, when I am always, in every weather, abjectly seasick—and thoughtless. But as I now lay on my bed, uncomfortable, squeamish, without knowing why—I was in the same inactive mental condition. But not for long.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 14